Читать книгу Wyllard's Weird - Мэри Брэддон, Мэри Элизабет Брэддон, Braddon Mary Elizabeth - Страница 8

Edward Heathcote devoted his every thought to the task which he had taken upon himself. His first business must be to discover the name and history of the murdered girl. The clue in his possession was of the slightest; but he was not without a clue.

First, there was the name and address of the baker on the biscuit-bag. This gave him an indication of the part of Paris in which the girl must have been living before she started for England; it also indicated that she had left Paris within a few days of her journey westward.

But he had a second clue, and a much better one. Within a week after the adjourned inquest, a farm-labourer had brought him a large oval silver locket, which he had picked up in the gorge where the girl fell. The spot lay a little way off the direct path to the man's work, and morbid curiosity had impelled him to go and examine the place in the early morning, before his daily labour began.

Prowling about among the ferns and crags, he had struck his foot against a glistening object, which proved to be an old silver locket, a good deal worn and battered; a double locket, containing a waxen Agnus Dei, and a little lace-bordered picture of the Virgin Mary, the paper worn thin by much handling.

The man carried the locket to the Coroner, who rewarded him with half a sovereign, and laid the relic aside in his desk, after a minute examination. It had been attached to a black ribbon, which was worn and old, and had snapped with the jerk of the girl's fall.

Upon the locket itself there was not the faintest sign which could lead to the identification of the wearer; but upon the little lace-edged engraving there were these words neatly written in a fine French penmanship:

"Souvenir from Sister Gudule de la Miséricorde to Léonie. Dinan, October 1879. Child of Jesus, pray for us."

To Heathcote's mind this brief legend indicated three facts.

First, that the Christian name of the wearer of the locket was Léonie. Secondly, that she had been educated at a convent at Dinan. Thirdly, that she left the convent in October 1879, and that the little paper had been placed in her locket at parting. The nuns have no valuable gifts to offer their protégées. An engraving of Saint or Blessed Virgin would be the most precious token holy-poverty could bestow. This indication of the locket was the clue which Heathcote decided to follow in the first instance. He made his arrangements for leaving England without an hour's delay; but before turning his back upon The Spaniards, he exacted Hilda's promise that she would not see Bothwell Grahame during his absence.

"Mr. Grahame's entanglement with another woman is an all-sufficient reason for your holding yourself aloof from him," said her brother. "When he is free to ask you to be his wife, let him come to me and submit his pretensions to me, as your natural guardian. Perhaps, by that time, I may have succeeded in setting him right with those who now look askance upon him!"

Mr. Heathcote determined to call upon Joseph Distin before he crossed the Channel. He had thought the question out thoroughly during a sleepless night; and it seemed to him that it would be folly to enter upon his difficult task of investigation without having first armed himself with such advice as the criminal lawyer was able to give. Before acting upon his own opinion it would be well to know the opinion of a disinterested expert.

He called at Distin's offices the morning after his arrival in London. The offices were in Furnival's Inn, a quiet and convenient spot, not too far from the Old Bailey, and within a ten minutes' walk of the stuffy old law-courts, still extant in Chancery Lane. Mr. Heathcote sent in his card; and although at least half a dozen clients were waiting for Mr. Distin, he was admitted immediately, and received with marked cordiality.

"My dear Mr. Heathcote, charmed to see you. How good of you to look me up!" exclaimed Distin, as he pushed forward a morocco-covered armchair.

There was nothing æsthetic, picturesque, or newfangled in Mr. Distin's office, where the prevailing tone was a sober, substantial comfort. Most of the furniture looked at least fifty years old; but the Turkey carpet was the richest that the looms of Orient can produce; the spacious armchairs invited to repose, and to that ease of body which favours expansion of mind and friendly candour.

"Are you in town on business or pleasure?" inquired the lawyer, in his airy manner. "Going through to the north, perhaps; grouse-moor, eh?"

"Nothing is further from my thoughts than shooting grouse," replied Heathcote. "I am in London on my way to the Continent. I am going to hunt up the antecedents of that poor girl who was killed on our line; I want to find out who she was and how she came to be in the way of meeting her death in our locality."

The lawyer's airy manner was dropped in a moment, and he became intensely grave.

"O, you are going into that business, are you, and so late in the day? But why?"

"I would rather not discuss my motive, if you will kindly excuse me." Mr. Distin bowed. "I want to avail myself of your talent and experience to the uttermost before I begin to work on my own account."

"The most my talent can do for you in this matter is very little; to tell you the truth, I made a dismal failure of the business," returned Distin, with agreeable frankness. He was too successful a man to be ashamed to confess a failure. "But really now, Mr. Heathcote, by far the wisest counsel I can give you is to forget all about this sad story, and to let the world go on just as if that poor girl's death had never come within your ken. You did your duty as Coroner, you know. Nothing more could be asked or expected of you. Why, then, should you do more? You are very friendly with the family at Penmorval. Take my advice. 'Let sleeping dogs lie.'"

"That is what you said to Mr. Wyllard the morning you were leaving."

"I may have used that adage. It is a very good one."

"And you recommend me to drop this investigation, for the sake of my friends at Penmorval," said Heathcote. "I infer from that advice that you suspect Mr. Grahame of being concerned in the French girl's death."

"I confess to you that his whole manner and conduct were to my mind suggestive of guilt. Of course, manner and conduct are not evidence. At this present time there is not a shred of evidence to connect Mr. Grahame with the crime, except the one fact that he was in the train when the girl was killed; but that point would apply equally to everybody else in the train, or rather to any one who happened to be alone in a carriage as Mr. Grahame was. At present Mrs. Wyllard's cousin is safe. If his was the arm that thrust that girl off the footboard, there is nothing to bring the crime home to him. But go a few steps further, follow up any clue which you may happen to possess – you would not start upon such an investigation without some kind of clue," speculated Joseph Distin shrewdly – "pursue your trail a few yards further, and you may come upon evidence that will put a rope round your friend's neck, and bring lasting disgrace upon the family at Penmorval. I advised my old friend Wyllard to let this matter drop. I advise you to do the same."

"I cannot act upon your advice. There has been too much mischief done already. Mr. Grahame's refusal to answer your questions about his whereabouts on the day of the murder has condemned him in the minds of his fellow-townsmen. His name is blackened by a terrible suspicion, and I have sworn to clear it, if it can be cleared. If he is guilty – well, he can hardly be worse off with a rope round his neck than he is now, with all his old friends estranged from him. For my own part, in such a case I should infinitely prefer the rope. It would be a short way out of a difficulty."

"My experience of criminals is that when the crisis comes they would rather endure the ignominy than the halter," replied Distin. "Perhaps you have never seen a man within an hour of his being hanged?"

"Thank God I have not been obliged to do that, though I have had to look upon one an hour after."

"Ah, then you do not know to what manhood can descend – how it can grovel before the spectre of instant, certain death. Come now, cannot I persuade you to think better of your idea of investigating this mysterious business?"

"No. I have promised to do it. I must keep my promise."

"So be it."

And then Joseph Distin discussed the matter freely, with perfect frankness. He told Heathcote what means he had used to discover the girl's identity on this side of the Channel.

"I should have gone further and crossed the water, if I had not seen good reason to desist," he said, when he had explained his plan of inquiry at every likely lodging-house, and how that plan had totally failed.

"But what would you have done on the other side of the water, without any clue?"

"I should have gone across myself and put the case into the hands of Félix Drubarde, one of the cleverest police-officers in Paris. He would have been instantly on the alert to hear of any application made to the police by the relatives and friends of the missing girl. She could hardly disappear for any length of time without some one being concerned by her disappearance. The application to the police might not occur perhaps until months after her death; but it would be likely to occur sooner or later. And, again, Félix Drubarde has his allies in every quarter of Paris. He hears of events so quickly that it might be supposed he had a network of speaking-tubes all over the city. With his help I should have been almost certain to arrive at the identification of the dead girl."

"But I sent three advertisements to each of the best known Paris newspapers," said Heathcote. "How do you account for those advertisements not having been seen by the girl's friends?"

"Because French people of the lower classes are sometimes very illiterate, and live in a very narrow circle. Your papers may not have come within the range of the girl's friends. They would be likely to apply to the police when time passed and they received no tidings of her. But they would not be likely to see your best known papers – the papers of the upper classes, no doubt. And then your advertisements appeared immediately after the girl's death; at a time when the parents or friends had no reason for feeling alarmed as to her safety."

"That may be so," replied Heathcote thoughtfully. "I think you can help me very much in my undertaking, Mr. Distin, if you are willing to do so."

"In what way?"

"Give me a letter of introduction to this Parisian detective, and let me engage his aid by and by, when I go to Paris. I shall be happy to pay him liberally for his services."

"Drubarde is no extortioner. He will not fleece you," said Distin. "In fact the man is a gentleman, in his own particular line. He has made an independence, and he only works now as an amateur. Yes, I will give you a letter of introduction to him with pleasure, since you are bent on pursuing this business to the bitter end. I suppose you will go straight to Paris.

"No. I want first to follow up the only valuable clue I have. I shall go first to Dinan, in Brittany, to find the convent, where I have reason to believe this poor girl was educated."